I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

The Fall of Hippolyta

This is how you rot.

Jasper could not tell whether the ringing in her ears was just a figment of her imagination or due to the fact that she was just slammed into the desert ground from over a story high. Her body stung, but she brushed it off as easily as you would a speck of dust. But the ringing, the incessant ringing, extended from her ears to her arms. It was a static that burned and tightened every muscle to where she could barely control herself. Not even within the confines of Malachite had she felt this kind of fear.

She could hear speech, Rose, the runt, Peridot. She heard their words as if they were put through some distorted filter, distant and scared, maybe she was scared. She heard words spill out of her mouth, words that were coated with acid and thorns but at this point she wasn't sure if they were pointed at them or herself.

Before she knew what the concept of death was, the thought of death was one of her earliest memories. Just moments after emerging from her hole in the kindergarten she was greeted by the cacophony of screams that rang through its sandstone walls. Jasper was branded with the title of sole survivor whether she wanted it or not. Sisters that she would never know would leave this world as soon as they came into it. Not even within the confines of Malachite had she felt this kind of fear. This was a different breed of fear. This was loss.

Jasper never cried a day in her life. Not even the fall of her beloved diamond drew a tear from her eye and she wasn't about to let her record slip now. She couldn't. Not in front of Rose.

Her whole body was static. Everything was too large and too heavy. She felt everything all at once but she couldn't bring herself to scream. Remember that you deserved this, a mantra that repeated itself again and again in her head. She didn't even feel the metal rod that pierced her abdomen, impaling her where she stood like a shrike would a rat.

In the span of a second, Jasper was gone, but something told her that she had been gone for some time. The ringing stopped, as did the static. It didn't matter to her if they decided to shatter her or not, it felt right that she would be, here where she was forced to fight while her sisters were struck down one by one. It wasn't like her to give up so easily, but for once in what felt like the longest year of her life did she feel some form of respite. It wasn't peace, but it was something.